Even as the series stopped with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the magical charm of JK Rowling's writing has not ceased. The unique, author-annotated edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" fetched a record price of $228,000 at the auction held at a Sotheby's auction in London on Tuesday.
The book auctioned at the 'First Edition, Second Thoughts' charity auction is called the rarest of the series as only 500 copies of the first edition exists. With the launch of the book, the series grew into being the best-seller ever and was evolved into a multibillion-dollar film franchise. It narrates the story of a boy wizard Harry Potter, his friends Ron and Hermione and their lives amongst wizards and muggles.
The book as reported earlier contains 43 pages of handwritten musings of Rowling and her commentary on the book's film adaption. In addition, it contained 22 hand written illustrations by the author, including that of an infant Harry Potter sleeping and one of Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts's celebrated head master.
The book includes thoughts from Rowing like, "I wrote the book...in snatched hours, in clattering cafes or in the dead of night. For me, the story of how I wrote Harry potter and the Philosopher's Stone is written invisibly on every page, legible only to me. Sixteen years after it was published, the memories are as vivid as ever as I turn these pages"
The most coveted 1997 book was sold to an anonymous bidder for $228,000. The book was among the group of 51 first editions that was put up in the charity auction held to support English PEN organisation's core programmes that aim to defend the freedom to write and read and that of JK Rowling's Lumos Foundation which works for children worldwide.
Among the top sellers was Roald Dahl's "Matilda" with Quentin Blake's illustrations which fetched $45,600; Julian Barnes's "Metroland" for $21,000; "Life of Pi" with author Yann Martel's notes which fetched $3,900 and the first edition of "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood' which received '$5,460.The total auction fetched $667,280.